2,56,913 'forced' suicides! Phew!

Hi Dear One! I stand thoroughly jolted to my roots by the statistic of farmer's suicides across India in general and 5 States in particular---Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh-- from 1995 till 2010--I mean the number that I have just repeated for you. Given your rosy view iof a better India through your pink glasses you may say that these are teething problems of a developing society--are we truly developing?--but I am sorry I see this as a classic illustration of absolute inaction and gross indifference on the part of our Central Government for several years at a stretch.Why?Didn't they know that agriculture had become the riskiest vocation in the country what with unviable farm gate prices , the systemic squirelling of most profit by middle men and the innumerable glitches in maintaining it even from season to season? Didn't they have the statistic of all commercial banks that followed a consistent overt or covert policy of delaying loans or denying them , and then of bullying tactics for retrieving agricultural advances even by take over of the houses in which the peasantry lived? Didn't they know too that the trend for taking one's own life was slowly but surely spiraling up among our peasantry during the last 8 years and that the rate of growth fell even below the so-called "Hindu rate of growth" of 3% a year?

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You will agree with me,Dear One ,that these deaths of breadwinners of now orphaned families could have been averted through more intelligent measures--not excusable in the light of Coalition compulsions--taken around 1995 or immediately after that year. The Agriculture Minister for those years--whoever that simian was-- failed grievously and thus must have a lifelong cell in Tihar, I daresay!While on the one hand India's overemphasis on non agricultural manufacture has condemned the farmer class to wither away in indigence in our nation's vast hinterlands as virtual nonentities, we see on the other the tilt in the balance through this additional death-by-debt burden.How could anyone justify them?No way! Yes, I have a suggestion in this regard,Dear One. At least 16 corporate firms are in the field sharing in the export or production of agri processed foods or other items.Many of them do provide farmers with high quality seeds and technical expertise , finance and motivation.Take ITC's e-choupal for instance!They give the crop insurance cover with a buy back agreement too.Why can't they widen the produce segment list by convering a million more farmers in edible food material items? Another initiative in this area would be to invite banks themselves to get involved--as foster mothers-- after that sublime principle in Islamic Banking -- in such cultivation on the Govt.policy cue.Or the NBFC's, which are far more in number than our nationalized banks! To sum up my loud thoughts on this topic, let me say that so many deaths forced upon our already cornered peasantry is a shameful scar on India's face and shall remain as a sepia blotch on her cheeks for decades to come over and above our GDP braggadocio abroad.I know New Delhi's habitual slow pulse on any felt need --as for example, the Whistle Blower Protection Policy--but let me just remind them that such orphaning of whole households through patching-up half-baked and tunnel -visioned policies and schemes that refuse to take off shall boomerang on the whole system on a tsunami scale of intensity. No way these suicides can be written off as casually as those temporary hiccups the great Napoleon Buonaparte is reported to have suffered from as a spin-off from some poison he had consumed a couple of years before to commit suicide in desperation! Jai Hind!